Month: December, 2009

Bedaro,describing the shokilla rayudulu of Bezawada,is smartly written,underdone sometimes,and paced with harmonium bursts to boot and narrates,well,the mechanic’s sob story! Evade Vaadu falters.The snazzy tune fails to gel with the lyrics and the MD gets the ambience totally wrong.Mahesh’s low key,uncut vocals,somewhat similar in timbre to Yuvan’s,fail to redeem the dreary Innalluga.For a melody it’s tune is too generic and lacks the truly bubbling flow.Murali Lola is better-a neatly executed melody with good vocals although the childish banter could have been avoided.It takes a bit of it’s sheen away.The ominous sounding Nayudocchadoe vacillates between funny and fearsome but in the end it settles down into a mere hero worship number with little or no spunk.Karthik’s sprightly singing elevates Nee Rendallo to an extent but the hackneyed tune,again,bogs it down.Payaname is interesting but would rather work in a context.

Mahesh Shankar makes an honest effort but sadly that isn’t enough.He ends up way below Pranayam,an OST in which he promised much.

Incessant electronica and dhol envelop the listener in this spectacularly noisy OST,as Adnan,mostly,and Sandeep pile it on literally.Just Do It,One More Dance,Yaba Daba Yahoo…The list is unending.This blaze only dissipates to give way to a lucid Pal Mein Hi,sung by Shaan…oops no..Soham,and Rishta Hai Mera,sung by the real Shaan,only to be blissfully smothered,once again,by more techno,more dhol and a bizarrely incoherent grunt flexing exercise by Vishal in Pump It Pump.Then there’s Pe Pe Pepein,straight out of Pritam’s (dis)array,and shockingly,no! hilariously(talk about two people getting the same ingenious idea!),the pompous shehnai notes seem to have parachuted straight from a Pritam’s own song,Oh By God.

Here’s one OST that tries to be all fire,brimstone and intent.In the end as smoke descends the intent had long back vaporised.

10 on 10,sung in a brusque and spirited fashion by VIVA girl Mahua Kamat,stands out with it’s catchy tune and enthusiastic sound.There’s an expressly arrogant and dismissive tone to the song,girly in a way,which plays out rather well in Mahua’s crackling rendition.Anushka and Naresh,in particular,chip in well.Casual crooning by Domique Cerejo also works wonders in Pyaar Impossible,redeeming the slighly off colour tune in the process.For once, Cerejo also overshadows the irrepressible Vishal Dadlani with her vibrant singing and the,chilled out,banter like lyrics stack up well.Alisha is a straight out sling-shot winner with it’s soaked-in-candy-it-tastes-bitter Yash Raj goodiness.The groovy You And Me is just that-groovy.Other than that,there’s a bit of a hashed up singing in a mashed up tune.Or make it mashed up singing in a hashed up tune.Probably,in solidarity with the prevailing mood of monkey dance and affecting Paa spirit,S-S also come up with their own kiddo track-Ek Thi Ladki.It is one of those countless,harmless tunes that get buried under the deluge.

S-S restore parity with their good-for-a-giggle and a jig soundtrack.The vacuum for a beach listen fill up,after all.

The name may not spell magic anymore,but Ilayaraaja,the brand,even today,makes people sit up in bated anticipation.It is also,probably,the reason for my disappointment with Om Shanthi.Forget the synth,even the tunes seem turgid and coagulated,here.Flying On The Moon seems like it was done with the sole intention of teaching people how to frown and cringe.If the lyrics don’t get you,the singer’s slurpy drawl will.Frankly,or so it seems,english lyrics aren’t Raaja’s forte even as Toshi’s rank amateurish singing and Raaja’s clunky tune spell doom for the title song.Ottesi Chebutha is as juvenile with those laughably infantile lyrics coupled with Karthik’s rendition who lets it fly,going totally overboard in the process.Chinna Polike,although having it’s share of flaws,is delicious and salvages this OST from the deep sea.And no wonder we are given three versions of it.Kunal Ganjawala is refreshing with his somber,restrained vocalising,here,but Sunidhi is glaringly off mark,singing with uncharacteristic trepidation as if in a blue funk.Her solo more than conforms this-focussing on her chinks all the more!

The music,here,is so mind numbingly entertaining,so enthralling,that I’m bored.Devi Sri Prasad is,afterall,that screwball,insouciant creature that he believes he can get away with the same crime for a godawful one more time.I laud him for his intrepidness and assuredness.This guy has got balls.He believes in his convictions and gives a shit to what the others think.But wouldn’t this tenacity be admirable in more apt,trying,situations.Moreover,tenacity is for meeting deadlines,fighting down-in-the-dumps situations.Instead,it is rather promiscuous skill that is required to craft wondrous things.Like music.Good,ofcourse.So,the moment I tune into Pilla Navalla Kadhu,which by the way features Mika Singh singing not in Punjabi nor Hindi but in Telugu and ironically in times when Mr Kammula wants to resurrect Maa Telugu Talliki,and the dhol beats start trickling in,I feel like banging my head on the hardest thing available near me.I make do with a pillow but how much more of the same? OK, the groove’s atleast there in Assalaam Valekhum(someone inform the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind) but the lyricist keeps coming up with curiouser and curiouser lines that they keep getting my goat.Neethone is atleast consistent-It is totally trite in all departments.Meanwhile,the harrying Chary need not tarry.All you unsuspecting,be wary.Parry this one.Out of this entire exercise if there is something that retains a modicum of interest,something worthwhile,something sensible,it is Chandrakala,which is sweetened by a certain Hariharan and is enlivened by a light classical touch.Moving on,suffice to say Shiva Shambho,the last track in this odious audiotrack,has DSP getting behind the mike.The sensible should take hint and scoot or put up with an insipid song whose hook vaguely resembles the,now trudge like,civil rights gospel ditty…We Shall Overcome.

Pocket Mein Rocket has a nice tactile ring to it,almost in a giggle-a-minute childish fashion.But that’s about it.Gadbadi Hadbadi starts impressively but is a sloshy,botched up neither-here-nor-there attempt in the end.And just when you were thinking where this OST is headed you get Salim Merchant’s Pankhon Ko-A blithe song that blows across like a whiff of fresh breeze.It’s also amazingly light on it’s feet,although loaded with a heavy message,it never bogs down due to the sweet guitar strumming that lends this song a slightly off-kilter and melancholic character even as it fills the backdrop with a mature sound.

I,particuarly,like these lines even as the poetry is uniformly good.The whole life and kite metaphor..